How far does your age affect the quality of your life?

From the top of my head, if you asked what the most interesting detail about me was, I’d definitely say it’s the fact that I could be 24 or 35 right now and I wouldn’t know.

This was one subject that made me sad and angry over the course of my life. How come there was not a single person that cared to accurately document this seemingly important event?. The date of birth of a whole human. I guess it did not help that my parents were uneducated and my father was heavily polygamous (I think he lost count of the many children at some points and just continued populating the earth). You could also successfully argue a case of sheer ‘negligence’ here and I’d agree.

There is a Certificate of Birth though, which says, in French, that another Akinola was given birth to, in the same year I was supposed to be born in. The only little problem with that document is that that other Akinola is my younger brother.

My mother’s account of this event was that I was given birth to in the year that Chief M.K.O Abiola won the infamous annulled presidential election in Nigeria. This is accurate with the birth year on the certificate at least, so we could ignore the birth document and go with hers (I eventually went with this and adopted it in all my official dealings) but it nevertheless still competes with the hard fact of the birth document which bears the name of another.

My anger and sadness have waned over the years and gotten replaced by a sense of non-inhibited possibilities. I have assumed myself young and still able to achieve dreams (not that there is an age where it’s late) to take certain chances and opportunities, leave certain situations, and even relationships. These were situations, chances, and relationships I would have handled differently if I let being 35 be my perspective. Then it hit me; how far have we allowed the factor of age, dictate our interactions with life knowingly or unknowingly?

The factor of age in our lives

How many opportunities have we let go of or failed to utilize because we take into account how old we are?

“I’m too old to start afresh”

“I have put way too much time into this to turn back now”

“I’m too young to take this step”

How many times have we stayed in relationships we have outgrown because letting go means starting afresh and we feel we’re too old to begin anew, even marriages.

Age is important. The scientific world has made discoveries based on the number of years certain things or humans have existed. The holy book also says to “teach us to number our days”.

How old you are, should not dictate how many opportunities you give yourself to thrive, to start again, to fail, to succeed, over and over again. Life has proved that when milestones and achievements are concerned, there is no such thing as “too late”.

The body goes where the mind leads it. The universe agrees with your disposition towards life; closes in on you, or opens up for you to thrive. You decide.

Whenever you wake is your morning.